Whether you’re addressing a meeting, interviewing for a job, meeting with a prospective client or trying to make a good impression in any other situation - people interpret what you say to them only partially from the words you use.

In all probability, they  are picking up a very big portion of your message (and all of the emotional nuance behind the words) from your nonverbal signals. Do the way you are standing or sitting,  your facial expressions, gestures, touch and use of space express enthusiasm, confidence and warmth, or arrogance, indifference and displeasure?

One thing is clear. Understanding body language is critical whether you are a chief executive officer, a first-line supervisor, or a candidate for president of the United States.

But unlike political candidates, most business and other people are oblivious to the impact of the nonverbal signals they send.

The first step to gaining a nonverbal advantage is awareness - and one way to increase awareness is to learn from experience. The good news is that it doesn’t always have to be your own experience!

In this regard, the recent TV debates in the USA between the candidates for president were, like most such encounters, especially enlightening. Learn here some powerful lessons - positive and negative - from the way Obama and McCain presented themselves, and how you can apply the lessons in your own professional or personal life.

So much has been written in recent years about emotional intelligence, that rather elusive human quality that impacts upon the bottom line in the workplace.  Emotional Intelligence Quotient, or EQ, is a term being heard more and more in human resources departments and even in executive board rooms.  From time to time, we hear stories like that of the highly capable young  CEO  in the banking industry who was forced to resign - his only shortcoming being poor emotional intelligence.

Fine. But what exactly is emotional intelligence?  Perhaps the clearest and simplest  definition I have seen is that of Maurice Schweitzer, a Management professor at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania:

“Emotional Intelligence is the ability to recognize emotions and understand how they operate and also the ability to manipulate and change them. If I have emotional intelligence, I know what the right time to talk to my boss is. I know that my new partners had a terrible flight and lost their luggage and and aren’t going to be receptive to what I’m saying, so I shouldn’t make my pitch right now. Or I know that, if I take them to this particular restaurant or I buy tickets to this Indy car race, I can shift their emotional state to feeling more gratitude toward me and listening to me.”

Professor Schweitzer adds that skilled negotiators  tend to have high levels of this kind of aptitude, and they apply it in small subtle ways when they are doing their work. They might for example, during a particularly tense moment,  call for a break, go get a soda and also bring something back for the people on the other side of the table.

Schweitzer’s words appears in a Wharton report of research he conducted together with Francesca Gino of Carnegie Mellon University.

The study confirms what we probably already know: that one’s emotions at a particular point in time influence people’s receptiveness to advice. This applies even when the emotions have no link to the advice or the adviser.

And our moods and feelings may systematically distort not only our receptiveness to the information we are receiving, but also the  rationality of our reactions. For example, an investor may be angry about losing a bet on a ballgame and thus may underestimate the value of a stock recommended by an analyst. Another may be elated about the birth of a child and overestimate it.

See here for how I was once the “victim” of rather poor emotional intelligence, according to Schweitzer’s definition, on the part of a boss of mine - who was otherwise a very nice guy.  (I changed some details in the story, but the “Mr.Thompson” referred to was really me!)